|
Date: July 15 , 2019 Body of Water: Reeds Lake Boat: Numenon With: Alone Target: Largemouth Bass Time: 7:15 AM - 11AM Conditions: Clear and bright; southerly wind < 10 mph, water was clear (5+ feet visibility) with greenish-brown stain and 80 degrees F; air was 70 -90 degrees F With a scheduled day off work, I chose to return to Reeds Lake. I envisioned quality-sized green bass eating crank-baits off the deep weed edges. I was right! It took me about 10 or 15-minutes to get dialed in at the lake's main sunken island. I love cranking the hump's north side in the summer! But I also know it can be a frustrating exercise between hanging my DT10 in the grass and swimming the bait fruitlessly over deeper water. But when you line up your cast angle properly... it can be very productive. Moreover, this technique seems to select for larger fish. Finally, I simply love cranking! It's becoming my preferred mode of bassing. It's both a great way to locate fish, but also an efficient way to pile up bites once they've been located. Finally, I was in position; I'd started too deep, but my last cast had gone too shallow and I'd been covered with weeds. Moreover, my waypoints indicated that I was casting over a productive stretch of edge; and I knew, most of those points had been laid down because the fish they represented had eaten cranks! As I felt the Helsinki Shad DT10 just touch the weeds, I paused and then ripped; the rod loaded. Was it weeds or a fish? I had my thoughts, but simply concentrated on keeping the rod loaded. Finally, pulses indicated the fish's headshakes; and it dived strongly for the bottom below the boat. The day had started well, with a near 18-incher that pushed three pounds! After a quick release, I fired the crank back to the same spot, and I mined a twin bass from the same spot! This was a good start to a good day! The remainder of the hump did not produce; I'd mixed in some topwater casts and some casts with a wacky senko and a bluegill-imitating swim-jig, too. But my heart was with cranking, and so I never put my Duckett Ghost rod down for long. Having located a couple of quality fish along the weed edge and adjacent to deep water, I moved to another spot to replicate the pattern. My first bass here was a solid 15-incher, quickly followed by a very stout 18-incher. That bass absolutely crushed my lure, but only after I'd teased and missed a bite in some weeds. As I quickly retrieved my bait from the edge, I was rewarded with the second bite of the cast! I now had four legal-sized bass before 9 AM. I tried another offshore location without luck; and returned to the original hump. Here, I caught only a single, small pike. Reeds Lake was apparently going to torment me with the search for Fish No. 5 again! But not for long; shortly after 10 AM, revisiting the stretch where I'd caught Numbers 3 and 4, but now fishing from the opposite direction, I quickly caught bass Numbers 5, 6 and 7. These were all over 16 inches, to 17.5 or so, and so provided my limit fish as well as a pound or more of sack improvement via virtual culling. I continued along this edge into some new water for the day, but by 10:45 AM the day sailors and water skiers were out and my mind was wandering. I was hot; I decided to save my energy for another day. I was home with the boat put away by 1 PM! What do I have to say about this? Every so often, you get to execute a plan, as imagined. This was one such day. So long as I was in light contact with the weeds, my bait was a viable target for the bass. So long as I continuously refined my casting angles to maintain that light contact with the deep weed edge, I was confident that I was in the game. And while seven bass (with a virtual limit weight of between 13 and 14 pounds) and a couple of pike is not an epic day of catching, this was a still a good and satisfying day. I'd validated some suspicions, I'd refined my knowledge of a couple of key spots, and I'd executed well. I'd not caught any truly large bass, but one can't have everything, every trip! And, I'll fish for 18-inch largemouths every day without too many complaints! I had also planned to scout for other or bigger fish with other techniques (Offshore blade baits? Texas-rigged senkos along the same weed edges? Jig-n-pig?), but I may have been smart to get off the water when I did. Conditions were getting busier and were hazy, hot, and humid with thunderstorms developing; why jeopardize such a nice day? Pondering the questions of core essence and finding meaning in unexpected ways
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Steve LachanceRI --> NH --> MI-->MA-->ME Archives
June 2024
Categories
All
|
Proudly powered by Weebly